On
November 17, 1917 Sir Arthur James Balfour, acting for the wartime
British cabinet of Prime Minister David Lloyd George, issued what has
historically become known as the Balfour Declaration. Promising a
national home for the Jews in Palestine, the declaration established an
alliance between the Zionist movement and the British Empire. For the
Zionists the end game was to turn Palestine into a Jewish state. Though
the Zionist leadership probably did not initially intend it, an eventual
consequence of this ambition was the transformation of institutional
Judaism into an adjunct of Zionist state ideology.

Even before
the Balfour Declaration was announced the danger to Judaism inherent in
the Zionist state orientated ideology was sensed and criticized by
insightful Jewish individuals. They would describe their anxiety in
varied ways, sometimes using political, or moral, or religious argument.
All of them, however, could draw on a tradition of Jewish tolerance and
humanitarianism that, in its modern formulations, went back to the work
of Moses Mendelssohn and the 18th century Jewish
enlightenment. For instance, Ahad Ha-am (the pen name of the famous
Jewish moralist Asher Ginzberg), noted as early as1891 that Zionist
settlers in Palestine have “an inclination to despotism. They treat the
Arabs with hostility and cruelty, deprive them of their rights, offend
them without cause, and even boast of these deeds; and no one among us
opposes this despicable and dangerous inclination.” He warned that such
behavior stemmed from the political orientation of the Zionist movement
which could only end up morally corrupting the Jewish people.

Unlike
Chaim Weizmann, who famously desired that the Jews become a nation like
all other nations, Ha-am (who was dedicated to Jewish cultural revival in
Palestine) believed that the return to Zion was worthwhile only if the
Jews did not become like other nations. By 1913 Ha-am knew this
was not to be, and he completely rejected the nature of Zionism as it was
evolving. “If this be the ‘Messiah,’” he wrote, “I do not wish to see his
coming.” In effect, critics like Ha-am were making a distinction between
Judaism, with its moral values and cultural richness, and the
ethnocentric, tribal Zionism that was now coming into being.

As the
issuance of the Balfour Declaration drew nearer other Jews voiced their
worries. In England, on May 24, 1917, the Joint Foreign Committee of two
Jewish organizations, The Board of Deputies of British Jews and the
Anglo-Jewish Association issued a statement which asserted, “the feature
of the Zionist program objected to proposes to invest Jewish settlers in
Palestine with special rights over others. This would prove a calamity to
the whole Jewish people who hold that the principle of equal rights for
all denominations is essential. The [Zionist program] is all the more
inadmissable because...it might involve them in most bitter feuds with
their neighbors of other races and religion.” In the United States, a
letter typical of the Jewish opposition to Zionism was sent by Henry
Moskowitz to the New York Times on June 10, 1917. He wrote the
following, “what are the serious moral dangers in this nationalistic
point of view from the standpoint of the Jewish soul? Here are some of
them: first, it is apt to breed racial egotism....the establishment of
the Jewish state may coarsen the quality of Hebrew spirituality and
result not in a pure but in an alloyed idealism.” A year later the debate
over Zionism still went on in the American Jewish community and
occasioned Rabbi Louis Grossman of the Plum Street Synagogue in
Cincinnati to write to President Woodrow Wilson. He told Wilson, “...a
considerable number of Jews condemn the misrepresentation and resent the
campaign which is being conducted by the Zionists and the political
complications into which they are dragging our faith and ideals....The
Zionists may have alleged to you that Zionism is extra-religious...but
there are Jews who differ from them and maintain with equal certainty
that the Zionistic assertion is a violation of their religious
sanctities, and they protest against the secularization of their faith.”

Even though
remarkably prescient, these warnings were steadily pushed aside by the
rise of Zionist ideology among Ashkenazi Jews. The cause of this was the
virulent anti-Semitism in Europe. The imprinting of fear and paranoia
that was the primary psychological effect of pogroms and the Holocaust
seemed to render the criticism of the Zionist position foolhardy.
Anti-Semitism was posited as an eternal phenomenon that could only be
effectively answered by the drive for a Jewish state. However, even
given these severe conditions, Jews of high intellectual and moral
sensitivity still expressed important reservations about where Zionism
was leading. Hannah Arendt, one of the most insightful Jewish political
philosophers of the 20th century, characterized the Zionist
movement in a 1945 essay as a “German-inspired nationalism.” That is, as
an ideology that holds “the nation to be an eternal organic body, the
product of inevitable natural growth of inherent qualities; and it
explains peoples, not in terms of political organizations, but in terms
of biological superhuman personalities.” The result was a modern form of
tribal ethnocentrism that led to virulent, politicized racism. In 1948
She and 27 other prominent Jews living in the United States (including
Albert Einstein) wrote a letter to the New York Times condemning
the growth of right wing political influences in the newly founded
Israeli state. Citing the appearance of the “Freedom Party” (Tnuat
Haherut) led by Menachem Begin, they warned that it was a “political
party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy,
and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.” Begin would go on to
become one of Israel’s prime ministers and the present day ruling party
in Israel, Likud, is a direct successor of the “Freedom Party.”

Albert
Einstein, was also a Jew of acute moral sensitivities. As such he too
ultimately distanced himself from both Zionism and the Israeli state it
created. Like Ha-am, Einstein was most interested in a cultural safe
haven for the Jewish people and this was reflected in his strong support
for the founding of Hebrew University. The political policies of the
Zionists, however, alienated him. In 1938 he observed, “I would much
rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living
together in peace than the creation of a Jewish state. My awareness of
the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state with
borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest.
I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain–especially from the
development of a narrow nationalism within our ranks....” Later, toward
the end of his life, he warned that “the attitude we adopt toward the
Arab minority will provide the real test of our moral standards as a
people.” An investigation of the conclusions drawn by every human rights
organization that has examined Israeli behavior toward the Palestinians
over the last 50 years, including Amnesty International, Human Rights
Watch, and Israel’s own B’Tselem, leaves no doubt that the Zionists have
failed Einstein’s test.

Yet that is
just the conclusion that today’s Zionist cannot face. Thus, any revival
of these early and prescient objections as part of a contemporary
critique of Zionism represents the promotion of supposedly traitorous
anachronisms that are not only an embarrassment, but also politically
dangerous. Jews who express such concerns are systematically denigrated
and non-Jews who are critical of Zionism are slandered with charges of
anti-Semitism. The U.S. media, still bound by the mythology of Israel as
a democratic, modern, secular state that shares America’s pioneering
tradition, have traditionally ignored or downplayed critics of Zionism.
And, indeed, one has to hunt for contemporary expressions of these
traditional apprehensions and objections. How many have heard of
Neturei Karta (Jews United Against Zionism) or the other 18 presently
active anti-Zionist Orthodox Jewish organizations?

Generally
speaking these groups assert a religious objection to Zionism and claim
that Jewish “peoplehood is based exclusively on the Torah” and not on the
land or state of Israel. Among the more secular there tends to be a focus
on and rejection of Israel’s policies of occupation and colonization as
the basis for a moral critique of political Zionism. For instance, there
is Not In My Name, a coalition of American Jews founded in Chicago
in 2000. The organization declares that “the State of Israel often claims
to act in the name and interests of world Jewry, but ...these actions do
not reflect our Jewish values and beliefs.” They not only oppose Israel’s
present illegal occupation and colonization of Palestinian lands, but
also reject as morally unacceptable the position that “Jewish survival
depends on unconditional support for the Israeli government and its
policies. There is also Tikkun, a mainly (though not only) Jewish
organization that opposes the aggressive style of Zionism that has
resulted in the colonization of the Occupied Territories and the
persecution of Palestinians, while seeking, among other things, “the
spiritual renewal of Judaism.” The American organization, Jews Against
The Occupation, based in New Jersey, points out that Judaism is a
cultural and religious identity, which must not be equated with Zionism,
a political movement.” The British organization, Jews for Justice for
Palestinians, affiliated with the European movement, Jews for a Just
Peace, promotes the “human, civil, and political rights” of the
Palestinians–the victims of the Zionist movement. These are just a few
of the Jewish organizations now existing worldwide that find themselves
at odds with the present political and institutional manifestations of
Zionism.

Mainstream
Judaism, however, is ever more closely identified with Zionism and the
state of Israel. There are some 13 million Jews throughout the world
(approximately 5.8 million of them live in the United States as compared
to 4.6 million in Israel). According to the Jewish Agency, “70% of Jews
around the world see Israel as vital to their Jewish identity.” Zionist
education is aimed at the remaining 30%, who are categorized as victims
of “assimilation and Jewish illiteracy.” Again, quoting the Jewish
Agency, “Jewish Zionist education is a critical aspect of Jewish
continuity and identity.” This effort, ongoing since before the Balfour
Declaration, has been remarkably successful. Walk into the vast majority
of synagogues anywhere in the world, and you will see pictures, posters,
declaratory statements, or other indicators of a connection with the
State of Israel. Talk to the congregants and you soon find that they see
Judaism and the Israeli state as inseparably bound together. It is in
fact the case that most Jews have been raised to be viscerally concerned
with well-being of their tribal state. While we might not quite be there
yet, the opinion of Professor Robert Wolfe is indicative of the direction
in which both Zionism and Judaism are evolving. “There exist innumerable
definitions of Zionism,” Wolfe tells us, “in my view, Zionism is
Judaism.”

What does
this growing identification mean for Judaism? To answer this question we
have to look at both the ethical values that historically characterize
modern Judaism and compare them to the values of Zionism as characterized
by the practice of the Israeli state.

If one
looks at the descriptions of Judaism’s ethical stance, particularly as
expressed by concerned and learned Jews outside of Israel, we often find
variations on goodness, tolerance, acceptance of others (good
neighborliness), justice for all, and the maintenance of peace. For
instance, the Columbus Platform of the Reform oriented Central Conference
of American Rabbis states that “the love of God is incomplete without the
love of one’s fellow men. Judaism emphasizes...justice for all....it aims
at the elimination of man-made misery and suffering...of tyranny and
slavery, of social inequality and prejudice, of ill-will and strife....It
regards justice as the foundation of the well-being of nations and the
condition of enduring peace.”

The more
Orthodox Rabbi Naftali Brawer, representing England’s Chief Rabbi’s
Cabinet at the December 2001 Interfaith Meeting on “The Peace of God in
the World” told his audience that since ancient times the Jewish ethical
outlook had been that “the world endures by three things: truth, justice,
and peace...if there is no justice there can be no peace.” Where an
interpretation of truth conflicts with the ideals of peace the Talmud
teaches that “we abandon the ‘truth’ and strive instead for peace.” Part
of this striving for peace (“one of the most exalted ideals in Judaism”)
is the exercise of tolerance, or an “appreciation for the other. Shalom
comes from the word Shalem - Whole. We must recognize that alone we are
incomplete, it is only when we see the value of the other that we
ourselves can be whole.” Variations on these themes can also be found in
the writings and sermons of some Conservative and Reconstructionist
Jewish leaders in the diaspora. It can be argued that such an emphasis on
tolerance, peace, and justice grew up because preaching them was in the
interest of the historically vulnerable diaspora Jews, but this does not
negate the essential positiveness of such values.

When the
question of ethics and values are discussed in relation to Israel,
however, there is a change of categories and interpretation. For
instance, Conservative Judaism as it manifests itself within Israel as
the Masorti Movement, declares that “the Jewish State of Israel is
the ultimate concretization of Judaism’s goals and ideals.” The movement
views the “building of the land and the nation as a primary mitzvah”
(good deed). That is, the process of state building and reclaiming the
land somehow incorporates and projects Jewish ideals, ethically and
otherwise. However, the Masorti Movement does not recognize, at least in
its public statements, the possibility that adaptation to a tribal (in
this case manifested through an exclusively Jewish state) rather than
pluralistic nationalism may negatively impact the traditional Jewish
emphasis on “truth, justice, and peace.” Nor do other Zionist oriented
Jewish organizations active in the United States such as Hadassah,
B’nai B’rith, and Hillel consider it possible that a
perversion of values might result from the melding of Jewish identity and
the religio-tribal, Israeli/Zionist ideology. On the contrary, these
groups openly assert that values of tolerance, neighborliness, and a
sense of justice, can best cultivated and enhanced by the “Israeli
experience”– that is, through the vehicle of the tribal state. What they
mean, however, is not a universal practice of these values, but rather a
practice restricted to the Jewish community.

A recent
paper on “Jewish Values in the Jewish State” issued by The Jerusalem
Center for Public Affairs renders Jewish ideals and values into something
less universal and more tribal through association with religiously
defined nationalism. The paper speaks of Israelis struggling to adapt the
“universalistic values of humanitarianism and social justice which Jews
have acquired over centuries from the Bible and Jewish tradition” to the
“specific situations that they confront” in the state of Israel. Yet the
example offered by the Center refers to a situation that, from a
non-Zionist, outsider’s point of view, seems to belie both
humanitarianism and social justice. Thus, the example given is “the
recent controversies over building the bypass roads in the [occupied]
territories between those who want the roads to be built as rapidly as
possible so the peace process can continue in the field and
those...who worried about permanent damage [caused by the road building]
to the environment”(my emphasis). The paper does not mention that the
construction of these roads facilitates illegal Israeli colonization,
that access to them is restricted to Israelis only, and that they are
used almost exclusively by Jewish colonists and the army. To what extent,
the non-Zionist can ask, do such bypass roads serve to promote truth,
justice, and the “peace process”? Later on in the paper we find the
following statement, made without irony, “...those Jews among the
least attuned to an overt recognition of the place of Jewish values
in our society are among the most active in the struggle for
Israel-Arab peace....The peace process...will undoubtedly be involved in
the clash of values between those who see peace as a preeminent value and
those who see other Zionist and Jewish values as equally if not more
important” (again, my emphasis). Compare this to Rabbi Brawer’s emphasis
that peace is among the highest of Jewish values, a value more important
than any particular (tribal) interpretation of “truth.”

A negative
transformation of Jewish values is further encouraged by the Zionist
emphasis on the idea of covenant as a source of those values. As applied
to Israel, the primary interpretation of covenant involves God, the land
and the creation of a tribal state. That is, following divine
instruction, Jews are given the land of Israel and possess it as an
exclusive Jewish community. Most of today’s Jewish rituals, holidays,
liturgy, and religious education have served to reinforce this position.
Within the context of this defining relationship of the Jewish “nation”
and God as it now acts itself out in contemporary history, those
principles of the Talmud (for instance peace and tolerance) that tend to
the universal are necessarily trumped, or subject to reinterpretation, by
the particularism of state building and its foundational religio-tribal
ideology. Disagreements might arise between the Jewish citizens of the
covenant state as to the proper balance between the religious and secular
norms, esoteric debates might arise as to who can perform legitimate
conversions, and hand wringing can be witnessed over the effective or
ineffective enforcement of the sabbath, but these are secondary to the
almost unanimous belief in the divinely bonded nature of land and people.
Within the Israeli context, Jewish values must conform to this a priori
ideological doctrine or, sooner or later be downgraded if not discarded.
Justice, tolerance, and “peace” become understandable only in reference
to the advancement of tribal interests.

What happens, in practice,
when this religious tribalism clashes with the traditional humanitarian
interpretation of their values that some Jews of the diaspora have
continued to cultivate, not only for their humanitarian worthiness, but
as long term survival principles? Here one can take the recent case of
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Great Britain’s Chief Orthodox Rabbi. Taking Rabbi
Sacks public statements over the years as a whole it is clear that he
supports the existence of Israel. Yet, in August 2002, the consequences
of aggressive Israeli expansionism brought him to warn that Zionist state
policies, as they manifest themselves in the colonization of the Occupied
Territories and the associated persecution of the Palestinians, are
perverting “the deepest ideals” of Judaism. Sacks emphasized the Jewish
values of acceptance and tolerance. “Do not ill-treat a stranger or
oppress him, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Referring to
this commandment, he observed that, “you cannot ignore a command that is
repeated 36 times in the Mosaic books: ‘You were exiled in order to know
what it feels like to be an exile.’ I regard this [tolerance and a sense
of justice toward the “stranger” who shares the land] as one of the core
projects of a state that is true to Judaic principle. And therefore I
regard the current situation as nothing less than tragic, because it is
forcing Israel into postures that are incompatible in the long-run with
our deepest ideals....There is no question that this kind of conflict,
together with the absence of hope, generates hatreds and insensitivities
that in the long run are corrupting to a culture.” It is clear that the
culture he is concerned about is Jewish culture itself, as it has
metamorphosed under the influence of Zionist tribal nationalism.

Diaspora
reactions to Sacks’s assertions were mixed. The Union of Liberal and
Progressive Synagogues in England supported him. “What Jonathan Sacks has
said is what liberal and reform rabbis have been saying for many years.”
On the other hand Likud-Herut GB (Great Britain) asserted that Sacks
position was one of “moral blindness.” In the United States, where most
official Jewish organizations are lock-step supporters of Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel Sharon and the Likud Party, Sacks was largely ignored or
given short shrift. For instance, in the case of the major American
Jewish newspaper the Forward, Sacks’s remarks got scant coverage. What
there was, however, ended with this quote from Rabbi Sholom Gold, dean of
the Jerusalem College for Adults in Israel, “...it is extremely sad for
me to hear him make comments of such a nature which for all intents and
purposes will now make him irrelevant in the world Jewish community.” In
Israel major news and official outlets were often harshly condemnatory.

On August
8, 2002 the Jerusalem Post published an editorial that called
Sacks’s remarks “morally inexplicable and astonishingly naive.” The
Post continued, “For Sacks to lecture us about ‘our deepest ideals’
is worse than insulting...it deprecates the fundamental value that we are
fighting for our freedom and our very lives....Indeed, rather than
‘corrupting’ us this war of self-defense has brought out some of our
finer qualities, such as patriotism, national pride, and willingness to
make personal sacrifices on behalf of the common good.” The Post
than called on Rabbi Sacks to resign his position as Chief Rabbi. The
official Voice of Israel radio combined descriptions of Sacks’s criticism
with the fact that the Chief Rabbi had recently met with Iran’s ayatollah
Abdullah Javadi-Amoli at a UN conference of religious leaders in New
York. Sacks had said that he and the ayatollah, as two men of faith, had
“quickly established a common language.” What Rabbi Sacks meant was the
“particular language believers share.” However, the way the Voice of
Israel reported it implied a connection between Sacks’s criticism of
Israel and his “common language” with the Iranian cleric. To those, such
as Rabbi Arik Aschermann, the head of the Jerusalem based Rabbis for
Human Rights, the aim of the Voice of Israel was clear, the criticism of
Rabbi Sacks “was an effort to discredit him.”

Those who
assert that Zionism is the tuest form of Judaism must dismiss or
discredit the critics of Israeli policies. For these Zionists it is
logically impossible for such policies to do damage to Judaism because
faith and fatherland have been melded into one. Those who, like Sacks,
imply that Israel’s behavior may indeed do such damage appear as
traitors. Therefore, they must be rendered “irrelevant to the world
Jewish community.” It would be interesting to see how today’s tribal
Zionists would react to the statement made in 1961 by the great Jewish
philosopher Martin Buber. Essentially sharing Sack’s distress, Buber
asserted that “Only an internal revolution can have the power to heal our
people of their sickness of causeless hatred....Only then will the old
and young in our land realize how great was our responsibility to those
miserable Arab refugees in whose towns we have settled Jews who were
brought here from afar; whose homes we have inherited, whose fields we
now sow and harvest; the fruits of whose gardens, orchards and vineyards
we gather; and in whose cities that we put up houses of education,
charity, and prayer....” Buber concluded that the situation was so
morally reprehensible that “it is bound to bring complete ruin upon us.”
Buber too would now have to be labeled “irrelevant in the world Jewish
community.”

The
continuing disagreement as to what constitutes the real values of the
community has, in effect, split Judaism into majority and minority
parties. The majority element, which controls the religion’s
institutional manifestations, openly identifies itself and its ethics
with the expansionist, brutalizing policies of the Israeli tribal state.
They have given themselves and their religion over to the Zionist dream
of a Jewish state. What they have inherited, however, is the very worst
aspects of nationalism that comes when nationhood is pursued not in a
pluralistic spirit, but in a tribal one: chauvinism, aggressiveness, and
xenophobia. As a result there has been a militarization of the Jewish
mind, the Passover ritual and other Jewish celebrations have been turned
into paeans of nationalism, imperialism and colonialism, and Zionist
nationalists have invented (as a vicarious act of fratricide) the
category of “self-hating Jew” for those who share their religion but not
their politics.

And what of
those other, hopefully more authentic Jewish ideals, the humanitarian
ones? They have gone over to a small minority of the Jewish people who
seek to promote them as a curative to the values that underlie the
aggressive and colonialist policies that now characterize Zionist-Israeli
behavior. It is worth noting that this minority appears to be growing.
Jewish activists, both within Israel and the diaspora, now organize and
support boycotts, divestment campaigns, and demonstrations that spotlight
the aggressive and oppressive policies of the Zionist state. These people
are Judaism’s best hope for the future. They are also Israel’s best hope,
in that the interpretation of Jewish values they preserve may help to
eventually de-tribalize, and civilize that country. Civilitas
successit barbarum–with struggle civilization can succeed barbarism.

Lawrence
Davidson
is Professor of History at West Chester University in West Chester PA. He
is the author of two recent books,
America’s Palestine: Popular and Official Perceptions from Balfour to
Israeli Statehood (University Press of Florida, 2001) and Islamic
Fundamentalism (Greenwood Press, 2003). His last contribution to
Logos
“Orwell and Kafka in Israel and Palestine,” appeared in the winter 2004
issue.